Bücherjournal

For 25 years, report after report has shown that American students are falling further and further behind the rest of the world intellectually. As the American public school system fails to adapt to this century, schools in China and India produce four times the number of high school graduates as the U.S. and educate these students to a much higher level. Having revealed this frightening decline in his first documentary Two Million Minutes, executive producer Robert A. Compton next searched the world for the best high schools in the hopes of discovering a solution to America's education crisis. Then, in one of the poorest areas of America, Compton discovered a school that teaches ordinary U.S. children at an extraordinarily high academic level. This school demonstrates that American students are capable of competing academically with the best in the world given the right curriculum, the right teachers, the right inspiration, and expectation for success.

A story about greed, politics and the land grab of the century, ZIPPER chronicles the battle over an American cultural icon. Small-time ride operator, Eddie Miranda, proudly operates a carnival contraption called the Zipper in the heart of Coney Island's gritty amusement district. When his rented lot is snatched up by a real estate mogul, Eddie and his ride become casualties of a power struggle between the developer and the City of New York over the future of the world-famous destination. Be it an affront to history or simply the path of progress, the spirit of Coney Island is at stake. In an increasingly corporate landscape, where authenticity is often sacrificed for economic growth, the Zipper may be just the beginning of what is lost.

In the eighties and nineties, as AIDS ravaged the United States gay community, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was born out of a public battle for treatment and understanding. The Last One is a feature-length documentary tracing its history as an international art project and the role it continues to play as a response to a disease that still imperils vulnerable communities around the world. Through the intensely personal stories of its founders, volunteers, and panel-makers, The Last One examines how stigma and discrimination exacerbated and still fuel a disease that has already claimed the lives of 30 million people and currently infects 65 million men, women and children around the globe--including 50,000 new infections a year in the US alone.

In Latinos Beyond Reel, filmmakers Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun examine how US news and entertainment media portray -- and do not portray -- Latinos.

A collection of classic bloopers (mistakes) from radio and television broadcasts, based on Kermit Schafer's blooper books and recordings.

Deep Time portrays the landowners, state officials, and oil workers at the center of the most prolific oil boom on the planet for the past six years.